


The Upstart Crow

by CollingwoodGirl



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Banter, Comfort No Hurt, Established Relationship, F/M, Flash Fic Fail, Flashfic challenge, Implied Smut, Jack of All Trades - Freeform, Mementos, Miss Fisher's Flash Fic Challenge Heat 4, References to Shakespeare, Secrets, but honestly 4 hours is the least amount of time i've spent writing a fic ever, war memories, wwi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 06:05:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14395878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CollingwoodGirl/pseuds/CollingwoodGirl
Summary: PROMPTS: polymath, ginger, FrenchWritten as part of the Miss Fisher Flash Fic Challenge: to select a set of prompts and write a complete fic in 2 hours. It took me 4. Ah well... double the fun!





	The Upstart Crow

“For God’s sake,” Jack grumbled. “You’ll get welts.”

Phryne knelt before the large wooden box with all the giddiness of a child on Christmas Eve.

“If you intend to deface your knees on my account, it won’t be for snooping. I can assure you.” He tossed her the lone pillow from his bed. (Rosie’s, redolent with memories clinging to the scent of her perfume, had been discarded years before and never replaced.) Perhaps, given the circumstances, it was time to purchase a second.

She accepted it with her considerable, natural grace (even more pronounced given her lack of dress) and tucked it beneath her legs with a pleasurable sound.

“It’s very unusual for a man to keep the trousseau chest in a divorce, Jack. You can’t feign shock at my intrigue.”

He sighed heavily and propped up on his elbow, unfurling the bedclothes that had twisted around his torso.

“She took the effects that meant anything to her. I just use it for storage.”

“Precisely why I’m down here, Jack! What better way to reveal some of your secrets?” She pulled back a sheet of tissue and smoothed the lapel of his policemen’s dress uniform. “How handsome you must look in this.”

“Miss Fisher, that sort of pandering is beneath you. Flattery won’t yield classified information.”

“I was simply making an observation, Inspector,” she reflected, setting the bundle to the side with a bawdy grin. “And you weren’t complaining about my pandering when it was _you_ beneath me.”

The next discovery sobered her mood significantly—a khaki woolen jacket with pockets and a thick belt. One of the buttons was splintered, its shank clinging on literally by a thread, and another was missing altogether. She looked up to find him watching her with softened eyes (not the hardened tight-lipped expression she had imagined to find).

“That was the third,” he said with no bitterness, though there was much he could be bitter about. It was the uniform he’d come home in but not as the John Robinson he was when he’d first set foot on British soil—full of righteousness and vigor and the buoyancy of newlywedom. The war had turned him into someone else. Someone he didn’t know. Someone who even answered to a different name. But the path had led him to this moment and, in that knowledge, he found solace.

“And last,” she replied tightly, hoping it to be true (for ugly rumours were beginning to spread among her connections). Feeling suddenly and altogether woefully underdressed for such revelations, Phryne shivered and an object slid out of the untethered pocket.

She held the medal reverently by its green and red ribbon, her thumb rubbing at the texture of the bronze palm. “Jack? I didn’t know you were awarded the _Croix de Guerre_.”

Jack’s mouth squirmed like a worm on a hook before he pulled the doona over his shoulders and joined her on the floor, pulling her under it and into his arms. “Unofficially.”

“There’s a story there.”

“It’s… complicated. Due to, ah, certain political circumstances, the bequest was never put to the books.” He dropped his hands into his lap where they fidgeted uncomfortably. “I’ve never told anyone, not even Rosie. Especially not—”

Phryne hummed knowingly and angled around to better face him. “The French love secrets almost as much as I do. And, to be perfectly clear, you haven’t betrayed your oath. You’ve told me nothing. But—”

“But?”

“Well, I wouldn’t want you to take it as a reward but I’m overcome with the urge to kiss you right now,” she confessed, holding the cross to his chest. “Perhaps a proper bestowment of recognition for your honour?”

To her utter dismay, he stood quickly, blushing to the tips of his ears. “Jack, what on earth?”

He poured a brandy from the sidetable (a contrarian holdover from her remark on his bedtime habits) and downed it in one, clearing his throat and raking his fingers through his hair.

“It’s just—” Memories of foreign words whispered in a lush, undulating accent rippled down his spine. “I haven’t thought about it in a long time. Years, in fact.”

Phryne couldn’t have been more astonished. “There was another woman! And it has something to do with the medal. That’s why you never told Rosie!” It was only after the words had hissed out that she realised it sounded like an accusation rather than a revelation. “I’m sorry, Jack. Whatever happened or didn’t happen, I got carried away.”

“I can’t divulge the action for which I was most definitely _not_ awarded the cross. However, you’re not entirely wrong. It wasn’t the Colonel himself who, ah, _bestowed_ it to use your word.”

“No?” (by which she most certainly meant, _Go on, Jack! I’m on tenterhooks!_ )

“No. The operation may or may not have involved liberating the Colonel’s daughter from a German camp.”

“And she’s the one who gave it to you, on her father’s behalf.”

“Just so,” Jack replied with such stricture in his lips, Phryne hardly needed to ask another question.

“I imagine she was very grateful.”

“It was only a kiss.”

“She’s very beautiful.” Phryne held up a locket of entirely feminine design that she had found in his uniform coat’s concealed inner pocket—a portrait on one side, a lock of ginger hair in the other.

“She was,” Jack admitted. “The only lovely thing in a sea of absolute shit. But I was married and in love with my wife, and she was young with bad case of hero worship.”

“So, you accepted her kiss and her parting gift only to return home and buried them where no one would find them.”

Jack scoffed. “Except you.”

It was then that she kissed him in earnest—as if hearing his words wasn’t adequate. She needed to taste them.

His hands rounded the swells of her hips, crisscrossing the span of her back to hold her close. “I was worried you’d think less of me.”

“On the contrary,” she panted, voice deep and rough with want. “I doubt I would have been able to withstand a similar temptation. Come back to bed, Jack. Please?”

“You already know what you’ll find in bed,” he growled, a curl playing in the corner of his mouth. “I thought you were after secrets.” After rummaging in the trunk for a moment, he produced a small leather-bound album and held it aloft. “But, if you’re not interested—”

She all but tackled him to the bed to snatch the memento book from his hand.

“My mother’s work,” Jack said simply. Most of the entries were handwritten in a careful script, peppered with pasted snippets of newsprint announcing the acceptance and subsequent promotions of John Robinson in the Victoria Police Force. There were announcements of cycling races wins, science competitions, and poetry contests.

Jack’s near encyclopaedic knowledge was one of the things she adored most about him. He was what the French might call an _esprit universel_ or the Greek a _polumathēs_ —one who has learned about everything. Naturally, the quality also vexed her to no end.

“It’s reassuring to know you’ve always been a Johannes Factotum,” Phryne teased, her eyes growing round and white as bone china saucers.

“What is it?”

“ _Country cousin beats Melbourne Church of England Grammar all-star to win youth chess championships._ ” In her excitement, her voice would soon reach levels only small rodents could hear. “Jack Robinson! All these evening playing draughts and not a word you were throwing the game.”

His booming laughter filled the air. “I’d forgotten all about that.” Phryne pretended to pout as he wiped tears of mirth from his cheek with the back of his hand.

“I’m starting to sympathise with your cousin,” she said warily. “Wonder what he’s up to these days? Perhaps I should ring him and we can trade stories of your gamesmanship.”

He rebuked her threat soundly with a scorching kiss.

“I think he’s a banker in Wollongong. We don’t talk much.”

She rolled her eyes. “Can’t imagine why.”

His mouth was soft upon hers this time, and she returned his affection with ardour.

“We’d just moved to Richmond. Mum wanted to be closer to Uncle Ted and Dad needed to be closer to hospital.” He squeezed Phryne’s hand as she twined her fingers into his. “My cousin Philip is my mother’s sister’s son. He was well on his way to a classical university education whereas I’d been taught mostly in one-room school houses. I’m quite sure he thought we flew in different stratospheres”

“Then how—” (It was a question she’d wanted to ask for longer than she was willing to admit.)

“Curiosity, mostly. Mum always made sure I had whatever books I wanted, no matter how many new dresses she had to give up to get them. And Uncle Ted always helped. Philip, on the other hand, was raised in wealth and never felt particularly inclined to take me under his wing—not that I asked, mind.”

“I take it, as you’re not regular correspondents, that he never quite forgave you for trouncing him in that chess match.”

“I think it was the press coverage that bothered him more than the loss. He retaliated in an essay he wrote for the school paper.” Jack gave an insouciant shrug. “It didn’t have the effect on me he intended. I was already a fan of Shakespeare by then.”

“The upstart crow?”

“You’ve been reading my Complete Works.”

“Good thing, too,” she purred, pushing him to the mattress and straddling his waist. “It appears I need to work harder to stay on top. I will concede one thing, though, Jack.”

“Hmmm?” he asked, tipping his hips upward as his fingers found their way between them.

“You may be a Jack of All Trades, but there are fields of study you’ve obviously mastered.”

**Author's Note:**

>  _There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country._  
>  \---Groats-Worth of Wit by Robert Greene (and written about that snotty, country upstart William—whatizname?)  
> Basically, Greene was totes jelly about country bumpkin Bill rolling up with no university training and being all like **Shazam! Here, have a fucking amazing play-oh, and I can act, too!** and opted to make a very public stink about it. After Greene's death, his publisher apologized to Shakespeare, who gave zero fucks by all accounts and embraced the nickname wholeheartedly.
> 
> Johannes Factotum = a Jack of all Trades (Jack Know-It-All)


End file.
